Nancy Postero

Nancy Postero received her Ph.D. from UC Berkeley in 2001 and joined the UCSD faculty in September 2001. She was previously a human rights attorney and a journalist. (Click here for CV)

Her work focuses on the politics of citizenship as articulated through nationalism, identity, and political economy. She argues that identity is best analyzed through situated practices at the sites of social and political contestation. Discourses of identity arise from the historical and cultural particularities of struggles over economic resources and meaning, and they are used strategically by actors, such as indigenous people and the state, to reformulate those struggles. By focusing on the complex interrelations between discursive, political, and material fields, Postero calls for a critical dialogue between cultural politics and political economy.

Her dissertation brought together these theoretical interests in the study of indigenous identity formation in lowland Bolivia. In the mid-1990s, Bolivia instituted a series of constitutional and legislative changes resulting, in part, from massive indigenous mobilizations. These reforms have the potential to radically alter the position of indigenous peoples. For instance, the Law of Popular Participation allows indigenous groups input in municipal budget decisions and the Territorial Titling Law establishes a process for granting collective title to extensive tracts of territory. The reforms are also part of an ongoing process of state formation which extends the reach and power of the neoliberal state, incorporating indigenous peoples into national economic development through the creation of a new category, the indigenous citizen. For the Guaraní indigenous people, rural farmers whose land is being absorbed into the growing city of Santa Cruz, citizenship is defined through the local practices resulting from these national reforms, in relations with international NGOs, and in community contestations over leadership and land tenure traditions.

Postero continues to work in Bolivia, analyzing the relationship between neoliberalism and multiculturalism. She is beginning new field work in the tropical area near Cochabamba, Bolivia, with the Yuracare and Yuquí peoples. As part of the 1990s reforms, these groups received titles to their territory and are now beginning the complex job of managing the land. Postero's new work will examine how the territorial reforms are currently articulating with neoliberal economic strategies, as more of the rainforest is opened up to the market through indigenous autonomy over their lands. Is this an unintended side-effect of citizenship reforms, or a natural part of liberal (and now neoliberal) notions of the relations between citizen, state, and market? Is this, as Foucault's theory of governmentality suggests, government through the rationalities of the market? This case raises critical questions about the relation between neoliberal state strategies, market rationalities, and notions of citizenship.